Pentagon

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although Trump keeps talking about bringing the troops home from the Middle East, that isn’t what he is doing. There are some 60,000 US troops in and around the Middle East. There is no prospect of any significant number of them “coming home” any time soon. In fact, Trump just […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Endless Wars

John Feffer

(Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Trump’s not bringing the troops home. He’s been haphazardly deploying more troops, drones, and dollars abroad, while waging a shadow foreign policy for his own benefit. Donald Trump loves to talk about ending the endless U.S. wars that he inherited as president. He tweets about it. He endlessly criticizes […]

Pentagon

America now solves problems with troops, not diplomats

The Conversation

By Monica Duffy Toft | – Is America a bully? As a scholar, under the auspices of the Military Intervention Project, I have been studying every episode of U.S. military intervention from 1776 to 2017. Historically, the U.S. advanced from a position of isolationism to one of reluctant intervenor, to global policeman. Based on my […]

Pentagon

Bestselling Pentagon Fiction: Beware of Defense Secretaries Pledging Reform

William D. Hartung

Co-author: Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – For the Pentagon, happy days are here again (if they ever left). With a budget totaling more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high, even as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come. […]

Afghanistan

From Baghdad to Kabul: One Officer’s Journey from True Believer in our Forever Wars to Dissident Veteran

Danny Sjursen

( Tomdispatch.com) – Recently, on a beautiful Kansas Saturday, I fell asleep early, exhausted by the excitement and ultimate disappointment of the Army football team’s double overtime loss to highly favored Michigan. Having turned against America’s forever wars and the U.S. military as an institution while I was still in it, West Point football, I’m […]

Pentagon

The Ultra-Costly, Underwhelming F-35 Fighter: Lockheed Martin Remains Top Gun in the Pentagon’s Cockpit

William J. Astore

(Tomdispatch.com) – How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens to be the estimated cost of the Pentagon’s program to build, deploy, and maintain the no-longer-so-new F-35 […]

Donald Trump

Trump Pilfers Billions from cyber-security, Puerto Rico in Pentagon Budget for Great White Wall

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne at CNN report that Trump is stealing $3.6 billion from 127 projects in the Defense Department budget that was constitutionally purposed by Congress, and using them unconstitutionally for 140 miles of his Great White Wall at the Mexico border. And remember, he promised Mexico would […]

Militarization

In Wars and Weapons We Trust: America’s Militarized Profession of Faith

William J. Astore

(Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the […]

Pentagon

More Money, Fewer Jobs: Why Lavishing Billions on the Pentagon won’t Help Employment

Tomdispatch

By Nia Harris, Cassandra Stimpson, and Ben Freeman | – (Tomdispatch.com ) – A Marilyn has once again seduced a president. This time, though, it’s not a movie star; it’s Marillyn Hewson, the head of Lockheed Martin, the nation’s top defense contractor and the largest weapons producer in the world. In the last month, Donald […]